


On Leave

by maggiemerc



Category: Captain Marvel (2019), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-10
Updated: 2019-07-16
Packaged: 2019-11-15 07:09:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18068909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maggiemerc/pseuds/maggiemerc
Summary: A year and seventeen days in space and Talos finally forces Captain Marvel, or Carol or Vers or whatever her name is, to take a break. So she goes on leave and straight back to Maria Rambeau’s little house in Louisiana. Only problem is neither woman knows the other quite as well as they once did.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A little "what the hell happened between 1995 and 2019" fic. But focused mainly on 1996.

# Chapter 1

Vers doesn't get winded really. Not often at least. Once the Supreme Intelligence’s stupid inhibiter went bye bye she’s found herself with a lot more energy. She needs sleep, and to eat, and to periodically siphon off energy from a passing starship (or a couple of blasts from the angry possessors of ray guns), but sweating and needing to sit down on the stoop outside a bar and catch her breath is relatively uncommon for Vers.

No. Carol.

Talos eyes her from across the street before coming over. “Have fun,” he asked, pointed teeth gleaming in the light of the bar’s sign.

“Fighting a whole bar and not,” Carol gulps to catch a breath, “killing any of them is harder than it—” god will she ever catch a breath? “Looks.”

“I bet,” he says, lips curled in the wry equivalent of a Kree (and human?) smile.

His eyes flicker up to a point past her shoulders and she knows someone is trying to charge her, probably with some kind of weapon.

She lifts her arm, fist pointed in the general direction of the unseen attacker, and fires off a blast. Enough force to knock someone, even a big someone, down, but not kill them.

She saves the killing for the Kree these days.

Talos takes a seat on the steps next to her with a grunt. “Having fun?”

“I was until some on leave Starforce jarheads recognized me, called me a traitor, and tried to get the whole bar to fight me.”

“And wrecking the place, that was the only solution?”

She shrugs and her leather coat rises and falls on her shoulders with the movement. It kicks up a bit of the smell starting to fade. Sweaty nights in Louisiana and a memories of a life too impossible to grasp.

“Carol dear—“

Talos likes to call her Carol. After he learned that was the name she had on Earth. He says it with affection—or what she thinks is affection. He’s a Skrull soldier and they’re getting along, but she’s never sure what’s genuine and what's him manipulating her to keep his family and people safe.

She hasn’t had a real friend she could trust since the black box played back the recording of Yon-Rogg killing Mar-Vell and its exhausting never being able to just...trust.

She leans back on her hands and lets her head roll to the side so she can watch Talos lecture her. She gets a nose full of the smell of her own jacket for the trouble and it smells like Maria Rambeau.

Monica too.

A woman and her little girl that she likes to carefully put in one very specific part of her headspace away from all the rest. She visits it when things are real rough. Wallows in memories that don’t feel like her own. Lives a life it feels like her body never got to live.

Sitting outside a bar being lectured by Talos is not a place for that.

“Please tell me you’re not about to lecture me...again.”

“I think a lecture is a lot nicer than what the police will do to you for that mess behind us.”

“We’ll be gone way before they get here.”

“I know.” He looks at some distant point. It’s a space station, so that point’s not really that distant. Just some shops on the other side of the road where patrons are watching the two of them like they’re about to explode.

Talos keeps talking, “But I think we need to go different ways—“

She nods. “Back to the ship. I get it.”

“No, Carol I mean I think its time you went home. Just for a little while.”

She blinks. “The ship—“

“Is not where your family is.” Now he’s watching her. All patronizing ‘I-have-a-family-and-life-and-memories-and-you-definitely-do-not’. She hates that look.

“You want me to go to Earth.” She’s smiling at the joke like the smile will make it funny.

“No, I want you to help the Skrulls gather, and then settle somewhere far from the Kree. But to do that I need you focused.”

“I am focused.”

“You’re a soldier Carol. And you just fought an entire bar.”

“That’s—“

“And you’ve taken to just exploding Kree ships we find.”

“Right but—“

“You’re damn good at what you do, but you need to let off some steam.” He turned to study the ruins of the bar. “Preferably in a less eye catching fashion.”

“I kind of feel like a solider getting discharged.”

“Oh don’t be so dramatic. You just need to go on leave.”

“You went six years without it—“

“And it wasn’t by choice.” Talos went six years thinking his entire family was lost. Six years not knowing he had a daughter. It’s not the same and they both know it. “You have a choice,” Talos says, “And a place you can go. Just for a little while.”

She thinks about the woman and the little girl she left. It’s been a year and a month on Earth. They told her she was family, saw her off with teary eyes and mega watt smiles.

She held them and felt the phantom of a life like stardust between her fingers.

She clinches her hands into fist.

“And you all? The Skrulls? You need my help.”

“Oh we absolutely do, but you fly faster that most ships sweetheart. You can catch up to us anywhere in a galaxy with a snap.” He snaps his fingers for emphasis.

She presses one fist harder into the step beneath her. Feels the metal dent.

“It’s not home.”

“I seem to remember your friend saying it was.”

“Carol’s friend.”

Talos doesn’t say anything.

Behind them the patrons of the bar are groaning and starting to pull themselves together.

“I’ve got barely a fraction of her memories Talos. Its not fair to them for me to show up and pretend I’m her.”

“You are.”

“I’m—“ Not.

He says it for her. “Vers?”

The Skrulls call her Carol. The galaxy Captain Marvel. The Kree call her a traitor. Vers the Traitor.

She hates it. Hates the name.

But it’s the name with the most memories attached to it. The name that feels right when a couple of goons in the bar call her by it just before the first punch is thrown.

“Carol.” Talos says the name softly and with surprising affection. “You’ve got to go.”

He and his wife have been hinting at it for months, but it’s the first time Talos has made the desire explicit.

“What if they know I’m not her?”

Talos doesn’t have an answer for that. Just another question. “And what if you go and find out you are?”

One of the Starforce idiots tosses a stool through the doorway and directly at her head. She dodges. Turns around and fires off enough blasts to take out everyone who had started to stand again.

“You’ll call me if anything bad happens right? The moment you need help,” she asks.

“What, yeah are you crazy? I want you to take a break not abandon us. I mean Mar-Vell’s ship doesn’t even have cannons. What the heck are we supposed to do if the Accusers ever found us?”

Carol chuckles at the thought then stands. She dusts herself off and starts to head back inside the bar.

Talos does not follow. He just looks confused. “What are you doing?”

“Whole lot of idiots with energy weapons in there, and I’m gonna need a little juice if I want to make it back fast.”

“You don’t want to just siphon off some ship like usual?”

Carol cracks her knuckles. “Nah. More fun this way.”

## ***

It is accepted that it’s really damn easy to get a job when you leave the Air Force. At least if you’re a test pilot who can still fly a plane. Any airline will have you.

If you are a single mom who had to leave because her support system exploded in a fiery crash so scandalous it was classified than it is not as easy. Maria’s made it work well enough. First as a charter pilot (but only during school hours), and then, thanks to Fury, as a test pilot for SHIELD, who demands a lot of overnights but pays so well her parents don’t mind watching Monica while she zips off.

Yet as fun as testing out new ships for a clandestine organization is its still...well it ain’t easy, and Maria hates coming home to a dark and empty house and she hates that Monica spends two weeks out of the months sleeping on a couch on the other side of the parish.

Mostly she hates that she’s doing it all alone.

Oh she’s given up resenting it. She trained to be a pilot in the 80s baby. One of the first women through the Test Pilot School. She knows how to swallow her pride and hurt and go ahead on. She’d be dead or washed out earlier if that wasn’t the case.

But sometimes she looks at that cold, still house and wishes for a little warmth. Something more than that guy down at the filling station who’s always making eyes at her, or the woman in the choir at her mama’s church who’s gaze linger too long.

They’re nice, and Maria itches for the companionship. But something’s always holding her back from taking the step forward.

And now, after seven years there’s Carol to think about too. Carol who died and Carol who came back and Carol who is off saving the universe and fighting an intergalactic war between shape shifting green lizard people and blue ones.

Carol...who is sitting on her blacked out porch nervously bumping her leg as she waits. Chewing on her cheek as she’s caught in the headlights of Maria’s car (okay it was Carol’s. Maria sold the Camaro and kept the Mustang because she’s a sentimental wuss).

The lights shut off but the engine ticks and she studies Carol, who has stood up but still isn’t quite looking at her. Her hair’s all solar windswept and her skin is star kissed and she’s so alien and familiar all at the same time it hurts to look at her.

Maria gets out of the car and slams the door. The noise loud enough to draw Carol’s gaze. Dark and bright all at the same time.

“No Monica?” Carol’s voice is bright and clear. So familiar in cadence it hurts.

“At my mom’s. I pick her up in the morning. No call? For a year?”

Carol flinches. “Three hundred and eighty two days in C-fifty—in Earth time. I think.”

Maria opens up the trunk and pulls out her bag. “You kept count, but you couldn’t pick up a phone.”

“Not a lot of phones in space actually. Kind of just an Earth thing. But I did pick up some equipment to make a communicator for you. You know. For the future.”

She holds up a bag that looks as alien as she does, and Maria eyes her suspiciously but holds out her hand to take it.

Her arms sags under the weight. And Carol, a flicker of who she used to be, smiles. “You got it?”

The Carol she knew was always a brat.

The new Carol can carry the weight of the bag like it’s nothing, and she takes it back, letting it dangle on her finger tips like a purse.

Maria shakes some feeling back into her arm and roots around in her pocket for the house key. “So what brings you back a full three hundred and eighty two days after you up and left.”

“I guess you could say I’m on leave. From the whole relocating the entire Skrull race mission.”

“On leave.” She unlocks the door and bumps it open with her hip. Flipping the lights on and looking for a place to drop her bag that will keep her from having to look at Carol.

“Yeah. I—Talos and I thought it would be a good idea for me to take a break, visit family.”

Carol says the word family so casually it hurts like hitting a few of Gs unexpectedly. Just a big blow that’s enough to take the wind out of you.

Because there’s nothing there in the way she says family. There’s no weight to the words. No understanding. She might as well have said “friend” or “old Air Force buddy” for the way she fails to grasp the word she’s said.

Maria lets her bag fall to the floor with a thump. “And we’re all you've got.”

She turns to finally look at Carol and the way the woman’s holding herself is enough to sap the frustration right out of her. Because Carol or Vers or whatever the hell she wants to call herself at least gets it.

To some extent.

She gets that she’s not who Maria lost and she gets that she’s stomping all over a dead woman’s grave and wearing her face and utterly failing at being the woman Maria once knew.

She’s guilty about it, and Maria half wonders if its the guilt that’s been keeping her away this last year, and not just that bit of Carol still lurking deep down who always needs to do the right thing, even if the personal cost is just too damn high.

Carol’s guilt brings up Maria’s own guilt and she tamps down on the annoyance and anger. Just like she’s been doing since she was a kid. Swallowing all the bad feelings and pushing through.

And missing the woman who used to happily bear the brunt of those feelings.

“Come on,” she says, biting back the weary sigh she wants to let out of her mouth. “I’ll make up the couch for you.


	2. Chapter 2

# Chapter 2

A man—her father? Is towering over her. Taller than any Kree. Shouting. Loud. Human. She knows that much. Unbearably human. And she can’t understand him, but his words hurt. Make her angry.

A warm hand slips into hers. “Forget him.”

The words echo all around her. Shattering his words and the feelings they bring with them.

“Forget him.”

She looks to the hand. Tries to trace it up an arm and to a face. Tries to understand.

She thinks its Maria Rambeau.

She thinks she wants it to be.

But the person flickers and shifts as they step in front of her. Their hand on her cheek.

“Forget him.”

And it’s Yon-Rogg looking at her with more care and concern that she can ever remember him having.

“Forget—“

Knuckles on wood pull her out of her dream.

She’s awake and laid out on Maria’s couch wearing borrowed clothes. Her hand flares with energy at the noise coming from the front door, and she sits up, keeping her fist pointed in that general direction. She creeps through the house, only stopping at the front door itself. She can see what looks like two teenagers on the other side.

Her hand continue to flare with power, as good as a loaded gun.

“I’m coming,” Maria shouts from upstairs. And then she’s bounding down them and wrapping herself in a robe.

She pauses at the sight of Vers and her glowing hand. “What are you doing,” she mutely mouths.

“I have no idea,” Vers mouths back. It’s instinct that’s brought her to the door.

Maria taps her own knuckle and give Vers the universal gesture for “cool it with the photon hands.”

So she does. The power rolls back beneath the surface and she holds both hands up in surrender, backing away from Maria’s glare.

The glare is gone as soon as the door opens. The boys are apparently there to do the yard. Maria sounds cheerful and happy.

But when Vers starts to move away Maria’s hand clamps down on her wrist.

Oh she keeps talking to the two boys. Keeps being friendly. Agrees to go write the check for what she owes them. But her fingers dig into Vers’ arm.

Finally the conversation is over and the door is shut.

“You’re gonna have to lay off the lightning bolt hands,” Maria says. She’s still holding Vers’s wrist but she’s turned to face her. “I don’t mind you staying, but those things are as good as a gun, and I don’t exactly want Monica around that.”

“Didn’t we used to live on a military base full of weapons.”

Maria’s eyes narrow at the word ‘we’ and Vers worries it was the wrong word to say. The wrong memory that’s barely there to invoke.

“Did we,” Maria asks.

She looks at Vers like she’s the enemy. And like she’s everything that’s gone and come walking back into her life. Like she might be more than Vers can ever be, and like she’s still a whole lot less.

Vers pulls her arm away. “I’m gonna go get cleaned up.”

“Carol,” Maria calls after her. “I didn’t,” she takes a deep breath. “I know you’re you.”

It’s a lie, but Vers doesn’t bother to correct her.

## ***\

Carol forgot to take any clothes with her into the bathroom. Anything but the ones she was wearing. So after Maria changes and starts the coffee she finds the Nine Inch Nails tee and the ripped jeans Carol had walked back into her life with and stands outside the bathroom door waiting. The bra is one of her own. The underwear brand new.

It'd still be too intimate for most people and she hopes Carol remembers enough (or maybe forgets enough) to say nothing.

The shower switches off and she hears the gentle cursing of a woman who did not think things through.

“Want some clothes,” she hollers through the door.

It opens a crack. Slick skin like a memory is all she sees. Maria focuses on Carol’s face, still damp and framed by wet hair. Fresh out of the shower there’s no shade of Vers there.

Carol is sheepish as she accepts the clothes. “Thanks.”

“We should probably go to Wal-Mart after breakfast. Get you all.” She motions at the naked body mostly hidden by the door.

“That's where the clothes are?”

“That is where some clothes are.” The kind Maria can afford for an impermanent ghost. The kind she’ll try and refuse to miss when this all ends.

Carol nods with absolute commitment and disappears back into the bathroom.

The grunt of frustration she hears through the door tells Maria Kree probably never have to deal with putting a bra on when you're still all damp.

## ***\

Breakfast is coffee and eggs, which is something Vers remembers. A lot of stuff on Earth she thinks of and finds she doesn't know, but other stuff is so natural and ingrained. Not enough to be referenced when she was on Hala, but enough to be immediately recalled at the sight. Cats, dogs, and eggs, coffee.

Just not things she would really like to remember. Maria. Monica. Parents who may or may not have been assholes.

“You like it black,” Maria explains. “Which was a total death-wish on the base. The guys like to brew it so strong it could burn right through your stomach lining. But you'd drink it while making uncomfortable eye contact with anyone who questioned you.”

“I know,” Carol says.

Maria starts at that.

“Not the staring I mean. The coffee.”

She stares down at her cup, heating it to boiling.

Maria wrinkles her nose.

Carol drinks it and tries not to make a face at how bitter it is.

“You burnt it didn't you?”

She did. She looks at the liquid, dark as galaxies a human could never see. It reminds her of Maria’s eyes.

The stars. Not the coffee.

“Trying to figure out how cooked I like it.”

“Brewed,” Maria says. She stands and pours Vers another cup. “Coffee is brewed. If your cooking it something’s gone wrong.”

She takes the mug and doesn't try to heat it this time. It's smooth. Not too harsh. The bitterness a complement to some underlying sweetness.

“How'd we meet?”

Maria is tearing at her toast, shredding it up before dipping it into the yolk of her eggs, but she stops and looks at Vers with wide eyes. The toast is frozen in her hands.

“I can't—there’s the stuff I know and the stuff I don't. But I want to know all of it.” Vers shrugs. “So how’d we meet?”

“Well. You were already at Edwards when I was stationed there. I was coming from the 7th at Carswell. You know, really big planes. I was good, but nobody liked me. Probably only accepted to the Test Pilot school because I'd been number one ranked at Georgia Tech. But you were a pilot from the beginning. From birth practically. So good they couldn't ignore you. That was...85? When I got there I mean. You were our welcome wagon. Big bottle of whiskey and the meanest looking cigar cutter I've ever seen.” She laughs like the memory is a good one. Like Vers wants to remember too. “You didn't know about Monica. Or her dad. So you went about beet red when he answered the door with her in his arms and saw that thing.”

“The cigar cutter?”

“It was a joke. Had ‘not just for cigars’ emblazoned on it.”

Cigar cutters are not like eggs or coffee and Vers lets her confusion show.

Maria waves it off, a little more sober. “Well I knew. A gift like that I knew we'd be friends if you could get over the whole baby and husband thing.”

“Which I did.”

They were sitting there weren’t they? Friends even if the memories weren’t all there.

Now Maria’s the one staring at her coffee like the secret of galaxies are in it. “Which you did.”

A lie maybe. Definitely not the whole truth.

But before Vers can get to the root of it Maria is standing and starting to clean up breakfast. Vers joins her and there—there’s that ghost of Carol again. Taking over her hands. Her whole body. Guiding her through a routine as familiar as the scent of coffee or burning fuel.

Even Maria notices how easy it is—the two of them cleaning up together. A smile is trying to form.

Vers wants to ask more questions. How often did they do this? Why is something so simple so familiar? Was Carol ever the cleaner or always the dryer? Did Carol stare at Maria’s mouth as much as Vers does?

She asks none of the questions. Focuses on the task and just exists in the moment. The muscle memory isn’t as powerful as the real memories, but she can let it be enough. For a while.

## ***\

Carol remembers Icees, and grabs Maria’s hand to drag her to the little concession at Wal-Mart. She’s ordered a Coke one for Maria and a cherry one for herself before Maria can even tell her those were their favorite flavors. Its only when she’s rooting around in her pocket for a wallet she doesn’t have that Carol seems to remember who she is not.

Maria’s never had to deal with someone missing all their memories because an alien race took them away. So she doesn’t know how the memories are supposed to come back. Is Carol suddenly going to be two people in one body? Torn by different stories? Is it all going to come back in a rush and one day Carol will look over at her with tears in her eyes because she’s finally made it home.

Or will it be like this. Flickers of her. All muscle memory and favorite drinks.

She’s sheepish. “Got any cash?”

Maria pulls out a five. “Do not tell Monica we got Icees. I’ll never hear the end of it.” Monica usually eyes the cotton candy—tugging on her mom’s arm until Maria says no.

Carol nods and sucks on her drink, the slurp noise far, far from being obnoxious.

“We didn’t have these on Hala,” Carol says as they walk down an aisle of houseware Maria doesn’t need. “Like we have, I guess there’s something similar, but Starforce is supposed to be above all that.”

“Sugary drinks?”

“All vices. ‘Control Vers.’”

Carol’s clearly mimicking someone she remembers from her Kree life, but it sounds just like her impression of that one squadron leader they had. Cox. Carol always said it like you knew she wasn’t spelling it with an x.

“Well in the Air Force, especially what we did, you weren’t supposed to have vices either. No smoking or drinking or fighting. Crisp uniforms. Sharp look.”

“Did you and I really do all that?”

“When folks could see us sure. We’d go to this bar up the road when we wanted to cut loose. They knew we were all soldiers, but we’d leave all the identifying stuff back at base housing so we could, you know, have fun.”

“Pancho’s right?”

Maria misses a step.

Which is fine because Carol’s stopped too. Looking at nothing in particular. Straw halfway to her mouth.

“You,” Maria really doesn’t want to ask because she’s terrified of the answer. “You remember Pancho’s?”

“I…” Carol’s eyes are foggy with confusion. Then she’s all sarcastic smiles. “I remember kicking your butt at arcade games.”

Maria brushes her off.

“And karaoke I think. Singing on this thing that wasn’t even a stage. Everyone watching us.”

“Yeah, you loved to sing.”

“I think I liked to hear you sing, and it was the only way to get you to do it.”

What is a person supposed to say to that? Something that could be true but is too impossible for Maria to know? It’s not like Carol ever told her that. The woman was full of smug little secrets. Soft smiles just for Maria. Private thoughts she hoarded.

“We’d drink too,” Maria says. Her throat hurts and the words come out croaked. “Lot of drinking.”

“Yeah, but,” Carol’s eyebrows are knit together. “It’s not the drinking I remember. It’s just feelings. The feelings of being in that place. Being there with you I think.”

“What kind of feelings?” Is there hope in Maria’s tone? Optimism threaded through her question?

Is this Chuck Yeager right before he drops? Either Mach 1 or death. No in-between.

Carol holds her gaze long enough that Maria knows the answer. Long enough to know Carol can’t possible say it. Won’t say it.

Instead another watery smile and a change of subject. “So clothes. What is in fashion on Earth?”

Not Mach 1. Not death. Leave it to Carol to find the in-between and leave Maria stranded there.


	3. Chapter 3

# Chapter 3

The plan is to buy clothes, go grocery shopping, drop off the water bill, and then pick Monica up from her grandparents. And the closer that moment comes the more nervous Vers finds herself.

Technically, Monica’s actually easier for her than Maria. Where Maria is very aware of who Vers is not, Monica is very aware of who Vers could be, and just assumes she already is. She smiles and Vers really believes she’s Carol Danvers.

Or she did a year ago.

Even kids on Kree don’t like to be abandoned for a year, so she suspects the kid she dealt with her last trip to Earth might have different feelings now.

Which means she will distinctly be the odd woman out when they pick her up.

She’s also nervous about losing this. The tenuous friendship between her and Maria, who navigates the Mustang down bumpy country roads, the cold milk sloshing in its jug in the back seat. The windows are down because “someone never bothered to get the air working” according to Maria.

Vers thinks she—Carol—might be the someone. She doesn’t ask because Maria says it was such confidence she doesn’t want to ruin it.

The engine roars with every shift, and the suspension is tooled for driving fast, not comfortably, so she kind of wishes she was just flying them. The ride would be smoother.

But the wind catches in Maria’s hair and the sun glints on her aviators and her smile’s so big Vers doesn’t mind the bad ride. The company is enough.

On their way to drop off the water bill they pause at a crossing. A train barrels through, and then stops, cars of coal blocking the path.

Maria taps her finger impatiently on the steering wheel. Vers considers how easy it would be to blow a hole through the train, or pick it up so they could drive under it.

“Do not pick up the train,” Maria says, eyes still focused on the placid view in front of them.

Vers looks at her with surprise and amusement. “What makes you think I’d do a thing like that?”

“Because using your little fireball hands would create too big a mess.”

The coal would smolder for days.

“No tossing our car over either.”

“You know, the point of having super powers is I can use them whenever I want.”

“You want to explain to that cop car behind us why an old Ford Mustang can suddenly fly.”

She looks over her shoulder at the all white sedan. A man with an impressive mustache sits behind the wheel.

“I do not.”

Maria just nods, like she knew she’d win this round before they even started.

It makes Vers feel proud? Happy? The emotions are weird and confusing so she rests her elbow on the open window and lets her senses take in the breeze.

“Though if this train doesn’t get moving I might change my mind,” Maria mutters.

“Want me to just run the bill over myself? I can meet you back at the house.”

Maria turns and lets her glasses fall down the bridge of her nose. “I told you no flying.”

“Not where anyone can see.” Vers’ voice definitely goes up an octave in protest. “I’ll climb over and fly once I’m out of sight of anyone on the other side. Then you can go pick up Monica.”

Maria hums like she knows the reason Vars is offering. “And you can avoid my mother.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You never liked my mother.”

Vers doesn’t even _know_ Maria’s mother, but what comes out instead is “She’s never liked me.”

“Oh, she loved you when she first met you.”

A tight hug and a the smell of coconut? Is that Maria’s mother?

“She loved you had a friend who got dressed down more than you. Soon as she realized how close we were and you and Frank weren’t it was all side eye and forgetting to invite me to Christmas.”

The problem after Vers says this is that she doesn’t remember any of the things she’s referencing. Doesn’t know Maria’s mom. (That hug was so tight.) Or Frank. Or why their closeness might be a problem.

The words—the argument is muscle memory too apparently. Live every damn thing she remembers.

Maria’s looking at her with absolute shock. No other word for it. She’s thunderstruck.

So Vers has to do the cruel thing, which makes her eyes water and her voice soft. “I don’t. I don’t know where that came from.” Maria has to know it wasn't her.

“You said it.”

Maria, God she sounds so hopeful.

“It just came out.”

And Maria wants to challenge that. Wants to press at the gaping holes where memories should be, and the creaking walls that hold more back.

Vers reaches for the bill in its little envelope instead, and is immediately out of the car and marching through high grass that clings to her jeans and kicks off burrs that catch in the ragged holes around her knees.

She hears a car door open and slam shut and she knows it’s Maria chasing after her. So she stops.

And Maria stops too. Makes no effort to cross the expanse of grass between them. It’s wet at the roots. Dirty water soaking into her borrowed shoes.

“It just came out,” Vers says again. “I can’t actually remember any of it.”

Maria nods. Maybe to comfort Vers. Maybe to comfort herself.

“I want too though. I’m not—I’m not running.”

There’s another flash there. A memory maybe? A hand clasped in hers. Desperate to hold on tight, but too scared to lose hold of Carol. The emptiness when Carol lets go is enough to make herself cry.

The past?

Maria is standing in front of her right now though. Not a memory. Just…angry? Joking?

“Yeah, you did that already,” she says. Yup, there it is. That anger mixed with the attempt at a joke. That’s what Vers wants to understand. The anger Maria is keeping buried deep. Putting a lid on it like she’s a proper member of Starforce.

“The Kree would have blown up this entire planet if I’d stayed. I had to go. The Skrulls—“

“Needed a hero. And you were there for them Carol. Just like you were there for Lawson.”

Something’s being left unsaid but Vers isn’t Carol. She can’t see the missing pieces.

“Am I just hurting you? Staying here?”

“No.” Maria sounds so tired. It draws Vers to her. She's struck with the urge to pull Maria into her arms and hold on tight. “God Carol as long as you’re alive I'm not hurting. Not like I was before.”

“But—“ But Vers feels like she's a sore in Maria’s mouth and the tongue that worries at it too much too. Maybe it's not as bad as before, but how can this be good?

Maria’s still looking at her and it's the concern that gets to Vers.

Maria looks over at the train. It's groaned just then. The precursor to a tremble. Stillness before it moves. “Carol can you maybe just come back and get in the car? For me?”

Maria’s asking Carol. Not Vers. She's leaning on history she has with a woman Vers isn't quite yet. But she nods. Trudging back through the high grass. She thinks it watches Maria. Follows her. Like each blade knows just how precious the contact is.

That's not a thought Vers would have.

She wallows in it.

## ***\

Carol is the bravest person Maria knows. That's not hyperbole or hearts in her eyes. It's fact.

Take an experimental ship up into space to help a crazy old scientist save some unknown group of people. Carol didn't even blink. Go back up there in an even less space-worthy ship. Carol led the charge. Live bright and loud and free? Maria was downright envious of them at Edwards.

But Carol was terrified of Maria’s mother. She had been as long as she’d known her. Desperate for her approval, and fearful of any disapproval.

Honestly it had been kind of adorable at first. This hard ass Air Force pilot with the biggest mouth on base humbling herself before a little old woman who was a good thousand-plus miles from the switches she’d favored in Maria’s childhood.

Then there’d been everything with Frank and Maria had found her mother holding a lot of opinions Maria didn’t much care for. She’d weathered it because it didn’t matter. Not when she had perfect Monica. Not when Carol would crouch in the sand with Monica and explain the ways of the ants they’d track with the magnifying glass.

She had a family and if her mom didn’t want to be a part of it Maria would suffer through. Be strong.

But God. God it had devastated Carol. She’d slunk around Maria’s mom like the woman was going to slap her at any moment. It had broken Maria’s heart, and led her to cooling off contact with her parents.

They hadn’t seen each other a year ago. Carol had been out back working on the ship with the Skrulls while Maria had handled her mom and pops.

So she isn’t surprised by the tension turning Carol taut like a piano wire the close they got to her parents’ place. Carol might claim to be Vers or whatever, and not remember much of anything, but she remembers enough to be nervous.

Which—okay it was ridiculous! Maria’s mother isn’t going to attack Carol (good luck). She isn’t going to be out right nasty, not in front of Monica. Not after putting up with nearly seven years of her granddaughter worshiping the woman.

Her mom is going to be polite, but Carol is still sitting ram rod straight. Like someone is about to inspect her bunk.

Maria knows what she would have done with a nervous Carol seven years ago, so she adapts it a little (amnesia and all) and takes Carol’s hand, squeezing tight and rubbing a thumb across the back of it.

The touch actually does a little bit of the job. Carol stops staring ahead and instead looks down at where they’re connected.

Maria has her eyes on the road. She’s trying to be all stoic and hoping her sunglasses mask her emotions. But in her mind she can see how well their hands fit together. Can see that first time. Yes, she remembers the first time she held Carol’s hand. She’d just come out of class and Carol was waiting to see how she’s taking to Test Pilot School, and Maria was ecstatic because it had been a day, a day where she’s more extraordinary than anyone else.

And she couldn’t hug Carol. Some part of her knew not to go in for the hug. But she took Carol’s hand in both of hers and pulled her close and told her what a great day it was.

She’d smiled. Maria remembered. Grinning so wide her cheeks hurt. And Carol had grinned too and then something had shifted. The smile hadn’t disappeared, but the way it created all this light in Carol’s eyes was gone suddenly. It had dimmed. Like Carol had been getting hit by the sun and it had gone behind a cloud.

Not enough for Maria to say anything. Not even enough for her to dwell on it that night in bed with her husband. But enough to…

She remembered the first time they held hands.

Carol once told her she remembered too.

She wonders if the woman holding her hand now remembers. If it’s as powerful a statement for her as it was for Carol once upon a time.

Carol’s hand twists in hers. Like suddenly she’s the one trying to offer succor.

“I know your mom’s not gonna hate me,” she says, and Maria doesn’t have to turn to know those bright brown eyes of Carol’s are on her.

“She really won’t.”

“What about disgruntled? I feel like she will be disgruntled.”

“Oh definitely.”

“And cranky.”

“That’s my mama’s default.”

“And she doesn’t know right? That I don’t know her?”

“She does. Monica has made it very clear in stories that I’m sure would have Fury furious for violating some SHIELD security thing.”

“You still talking to Fury?”

“Not often. He got me a job though. Testing quinjets like the one you two stole.”

Carol’s smiling. “Glad I could help get you a job.”

“I already had a job. Not as nice pay as SHIELD, or the Air Force was, but I wasn’t hurting.”

“What happened…with the Air Force? You talk back to an idiot superior officer.”

“So much I was nearly dropped back to lieutenant, but no. First the stuff with Lawson, and then I got reassigned, and then in 1991 they decided the Cold War was over enough to restructure the whole Air Force.”

Maria is lying.

She’s told this lie before too. To the parents they’re currently en route to see. Lied so smooth you would have thought she was an actress. Then the lie was to protect her parents from something they’d find shameful.

For Carol, Maria’s lying to Carol to protect herself. The woman holding her hands is Carol, but she’s not, and Maria’ doesn’t want to exactly go and air all her laundry.

She’s just happy the SHIELD has an agreement with the US Armed Forces, so the dishonorable discharge—the going from one of its most promising pilots and a shoe in for the space program to…a discharge on some pretty damn shameful moral grounds (according to her superior)—goes away. It’s like she just took a break in 1991, and hopefully she’ll get to retire as she always wanted.

Not after being an astronaut though. No she’ll retire as a pilot for a covert organization with more skeletons in its closet than she could first in her house.

But for now she’s okay keeping that from Carol, who has finally let go of her hand and is watching the house they’re driving up to with excitement.

“Excited to see her,” Maria asks, as she pulls up behind her Pops’ car.”

“God damn ecstatic,” Carol says, and she’s out of the car and swooping a shocked Monica up into her arms before Maria can fully process it.

She watches her mom, who’s standing on the porch.

She is not pleased.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for any and all errors. Its fanfic which means I do like two read throughs before publishing.

# Chapter 4

Mary Rambeau has a glare and Vers is pretty sure that if she hadn’t spent six years in an intergalactic elite fighting force that travelled to hundreds of alien worlds to battle monsters and wars it would be absolutely terrifying.

It’s not overt enough for Monica, who smells like fresh cut grass, and is animatedly filling Vers in on her last year and change, to notice. But it it’s not meant for Monica. It’s meant for Carol.

Or Vers.

It’s meant for the blond holding Mary’s granddaughter.

It’s the most herself she’s felt in ages and she smiles at the tiny woman, who has still got a few inches on her thanks to the raised foundation of the farmhouse.

“Mary. Good to see you.” The ‘alive’ is implied.

Mary narrows her eyes. “Carol. Nice of you to come back for a visit. How long has it been?” She sounds so sweet, like cane syrup on your pancakes. “Six years. No. That’s right. Seven. Seven years.”

“Mama,” Maria warns.

Monica has stopped talking and is taking stock of all of them. Finally she focuses on her grandmother. “She got abducted by aliens.”

The “mmm hmm” is quite audible.

“She did!”

“Mama,” Maria says, “Carol really did get taken away. She would have been back sooner if she could have.”

Mary continues to eye Carol.

She comes down the stairs, hands wet with dishwater, and dries them on her apron only when she’s within arms length. Then she opens up her arms.

“Well come on now.”

Carol takes a moment to look at Maria, because she’s still kind of impressed that it took her dying and coming back to life, but she’s finally back in Mary’s good graces.

The hug’s as tight and as good as Thanksgiving 1985.

Carol closes her eyes.

No. Not Carol.

Vers. She is Vers.

The memories are still in her ears and her mouth. Carol’s.

She’s Vers?

She steps out of Mary’s arms and smiles wanly.

Then Maria hugs her bicep and tangles their hands together.

Vers. Her name is Vers. She’s not Carol Danvers. She’s pieces of Carol Danvers put together with Scotch tape, and a whole lot of Kree blood and Tesseract energy.

She’s not—God Maria standing so close, and Monica pulling her towards the house by the hand is enough to—god—

No. She’s Vers.

She resists the pull of the Rambeau women.

She doesn't want to. She wants to go into that house and be Carol Danvers. Shed Vers like an old skin. Is it programming? Shame?

Carol was confident. Carol didn't give a shit. Vers wants to be her, but without her memories, with just the expectations of a kid and her mom—

Maria drops her hand. She's looking at Vers and if Vers thinks she'll be able to read the look.

It's like a rubber band that's been pulled too taut and is suddenly snapped back into place.

“Mary you know what I can do now that I couldn't do before?”

She lets the cockiness settle on her like a favorite jacket. Cocky. Something Vers and Carol have in common.

Mary doesn't care how cocky she is. “Stick around,” she offers almost at the exact same time her daughter admonishes her.

“Fly.” Carol grabs a squealing Monica up into her arms and shoots into the sky.

## ***

“So she really can turn into a bottle rocket.” Mama seems impressed by Carol, who has just streaked into the sky with a twelve year old wrapped in her arms. Maria wonders if her mom’s heart is beating a drum like hers just did.

She trusts Carol. Knows she'd never do a think to hurt Monica, even when she's not quite sure who she is. But watching your daughter shoot off into the blue of the sky and knowing u can't just follow. Well it's as painful as watching Carol dart off into the night.

Eventually they leave you don't they?

“Maria, sweetheart, you okay?”

Maria’s still staring up into the sky and she knows it's the brightness of the sun that has the tears creeping into the corners of her eyes.

“I'm fine Mama.”

Her mother is studying Maria and she knows she wants to say something. Mary Rambeau always has an opinion and never _doesn’t_ have cause to share it.

And when it's come to Carol Mary’s always shared her opinion. Given it as freely as the $5 she drops in the collection plate every Sunday.

But her mother doesn't go on ahead with whatever she wants to say. “Tell them to clean up when they finally come back to earth.”

Maria just nods, her eyes on the speck of color in the great blue.

## ***

“We are so high up.” She's holding Monica close because, well, they're a thousand feet up in the air and she's not about to drop a twelve year old she cares a lot about.

But they're just hovering. High enough up it's peaceful.

Monica says it all very matter of factly. Like kids do. The same way they say “that's a lot of blood,” or “that guy is dead.”

“We are,” she admits. Higher than maybe they should be. It might be too cold. Or there might not be enough air. She could kill Monica just by taking her too far up into the stratosphere.

But Monica is excited, not upset, and she doesn't seem to be shivering or struggling to breath. They're okay.

“Where'd you go,” Monica asks.

“Just now?” She tries to say it like a joke.

Monica smiles like it might be one. “No. When you left with Talos.”

“Oooh, then.” She went a lot of places. Did a lot of things. Tried to fix a lot of problems she'd spent six years creating. “Space,” she says.

“I know that. **Where**?”

There's a fine line they're treading between playful and serious. She's not sure she can see either side of it.

“Lot of different places. Talos has friends all over the galaxy.”

“Did you find them a home yet?”

“Not yet.”

She's found the wrong side of the line and Monica looks disappointed. “Oh.”

It hurts like a blast to the chest.

“So you're going back. After lunch?”

Carol laughs. “Nope. I'm sticking around for a week at least.”

Monica twists in her arms so she can look at her. “Really? Can you come to school with me.”

“I can take you.”

“And can you show everybody your powers.”

“Probably not. But I can take you flying again. Like this if you want.”

Monica nods. “Can we blast stuff?”

“I can blast stuff. You can watch. Safely. From a distance.”

Monica rolls her eyes. “You sound like my mom.”

She tries not to read too much into that.

## ***

She watches them land. Watches the way Carol’s so consciously careful. And how she doesn't look up at Maria, not until Monica’s out of her arms and saying she's got to tell her grandma how high up she flew.

Then Carol is looking at her, the pretense of cockiness not quite sitting on her shoulders.

She's a woman caught out. Maria glares and tries not to ache at the familiarity of it all.

“My mom called you a bottle rocket.” She says it wryly. Everything is easier with a joke. Been that way in the Air Force.

God Carol could make her laugh.

God, Carol’s own laugh could soothe the soul.

“Not just a regular rocket?”

“Nope. Little ones you but from the stand on the fourth.”

“At least Texas style.”

Maria shakes her head and Carol smiles and it hurts. As much as the way they'd held hands...just for a moment.

Maybe Carol can feel it too. Her face is shifting. The facade dropping and—

Well, Maria can't find her breath. Not in the moment. Not when she and Carol are sharing an understanding to intimate for the strangers they seem to be.

She wants to suddenly tell Carol everything. Fill in the gaps some super computer across the galaxy created. She wants to be selfish and claw Carol back from the depths she's been hidden and damn the costs or the woman she now wears like a coat.

She wants so much she finds it hard to breathe.

Then Monica is in the doorway screeching “we’re eating” even though she knows so much better. And the moment is gone.

“I'm definitely at least a Texas-style bottle rocket,” Carol says, picking up the threads of a plot of a play they're just acting in.

“I think you're more one of those little whistle chasers,” Maria days, leading her towards the house. She imitates the firework with a whistle and a sad pop.

“Wow. Cutting to the quick. I thought we saved the real mean stuff for the guys.”

“Oh like One Shot?”

“Know why they call it a cockpit,” Carol says—deepening her voice in a perfect impression.

They're playing pretend again. And Maria has to believe it's enough.

## ***

“Not much in the way of memories huh,” Maria's stepfather asks.

Carol swallows her potato salad. “Not as many as I'd like.”

“You remember the day you met our girl?”

Carol doesn't, Not really. Just what Maria told her. If she holds the memory of the tale in her head long enough she thinks she can see it all happening.

She doesn't say that out loud though. Instead she shakes her head.

“What about that Christmas y'all came to Louisiana?”

“I...it's fits and spirts.”

“You remember teaching me about stars,” Monica asks.

Carol can't help her smile. “Yeah. lieutenant Trouble. You used to get out of setting the table by begging me to teach you constellations.”

Maria murmurs an agreement. “Don't expect that to work now either ma’am. I'm wise to your games.”

“But Auntie Carol knows way more now. Don't you want me to have a thorough education?”

“Sure, and I want you to learn to clean as you go when you cook. Something your auntie definitely doesn't know.”

Mary Rambeau huffs.

Her husband changes the subject to Monica’s school and Vers listens attentively. Mary Rambeau, pointedly, does not speak to her directly unless it is to ask her to pass the potato salad.

## ***

Her mama is a dog on a scent.

She keeps the conversation civil, only calling on Maria when lunch is done and Pops starts picking up plates and insisting Carol and Monica can help him.

“Come on out and the garden with me and get some of these tomatoes” her mama says, picking up the basket by the back door and marching out without waiting on Maria.

Her Pops looks at her over his glasses. Part sympathy and part “this is what you get for letting that Danvers woman back into your life.”

Monica and Carol stay inside to help clean up with Carol giving her a look that she hopes she's interpreting right—she hopes its concern for Maria’s upcoming conversation, and maybe a little for forcing her to clean up for once.

Maria steels herself before stepping out.

Her mom is already at the far end of her garden, checking on vines of tomatoes that creep up the wire trellises she’s built. “She’s back huh.”

No preamble. Mary Rambeau has never had time for such things.

“She got in last night.”

“No call.”

“We were kind of busy—“

“I mean did she call you? Before just swooping in.”

Maria sighs. “No Mama. She did not.”

“Just shows up out of the blue and moves herself in and then just flies off like that—“

“Mama. She was kidnapped seven years ago. Brainwashed and used to commit war crimes. She’s got a lot to work through.”

“And I got a baby with enough baggage as is. Why do you need to put up with all of hers?”

“We’re not going through this again Mama. She’s my family, and I’m not going to put her out just because you don’t like she’s white or a woman.”

Her mom hisses as she pulled one of the tomatoes off the vine. “Damn worm infestation.” She throws it as hard as she can into the grass beyond the garden and then starts rooting through the vines, yanking off weeds and infected tomatoes and dumping them into her apron.

“Girl’s like everything on this damn vine. Just infecting y’all. Dragging you down with her nonsense.”

“She’s not, and you keep saying that and we’re all gonna leave.”

“Right. Until you need me to watch Monica next week when you go off to that job again, because we both know Carol Danvers ain’t gonna stick around.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I know that girl’s had her head in the clouds as soon as her mama birthed her, and that’s not gonna change just because you try and love her. If it’s not the aliens it’ll be the Air Force. Something will pull her away, because she’s never put you or Monica first. Not once in her whole damn life.”

She yanks and half the vine she’d been tugging on tears away from the trellis.

Maria has the inexplicable urge to cry.

“I hope that’s not true.”

Carol’s approach silent despite the dry grass, startles both her and her mama.

“Isn’t polite to eavesdrop.”

“And how about badmouthing people behind their backs?” Carol’s tilted her head and is watching Maria’s mama with quiet judgment. “Don’t remember a lot about Earth, but I can’t imagine that’s polite.”

“You know that’s awfully convenient of you, not remembering your own world. Your family.” Her mama stands, squaring slight shoulders to take on a woman who’s trained to kill in more ways than most people can imagine. “Hard to commit if you can’t remember who you’re committing to.”

Carol steps forward. “You think I’m pretending? That I actually like not knowing anything but the last seven years.”

“Oh I stopped presuming to understand anything about you the moment you broke up my daughter’s marriage.”

## ***

“Oh I stopped presuming to understand anything about you the moment you broke up my daughter’s marriage.”

She can’t remember a lot before the Supreme Intelligence. Flashes of a family she didn’t love, and one she loved desperately. Flying and crashing and a woman she admired so much she can actually remember Maria teasing her.

But what she’d really like to remember is what Mary Rambeau was talking about in her garden.

She doesn’t get a chance to ask in the moment. Maria steps between them, the strong line of her back filling Carol’s vision, and tells her mother to back down.

Then they make their leave, forced politeness in that way folks in the South do. She chats with Monica and Maria all the way back to their house, but she keeps hearing Mary’s words in her head.

She broke up a marriage? Her best friend’s marriage?

She glances at Maria. The sun is low and casting a yellow glow on her. Makes her smile brighter. Her skin glow.

Oh.

Ooooh.

Oh no.

Maria glances back at her and she’s…shy? “You okay?”

Oh. Yeah.

Fuck.


	5. Chapter 5

Carol would appear at too early a time to be legal. “Got to work twice as hard if we want to show these idiots up,” she'd say as they warmed up for their jog in the front yard. Her in an Air Force Academy t-shirt and sweats, Maria in her tights and leg warmers.

Frank would always still be asleep, Monica a little nugget in her crib.

The pink of dawn would be for her and her new friend, who'd smile when she looked up from stretching her calves. Her eyes would always flicker over Maria’s legs, like she wanted to say something about the garish color...at least that is what Maria thought at the time.

Carol would always cheat then—booking it down the street before Maria was quite ready, but Maria has longer legs. She'd eat up the lost ground and they'd have their rhythm, feet falling on pavement in a steady beat.

Carol, she learned, could be a talker. Not about her past, not about what she wanted to do in the future. She just liked to joke. Specifically with Maria.

It made her feel...special. At least when she noticed how taciturn Carol was around nearly every other person they worked with. Jaw set, eyes flinty. She was a hard ass pilot, competent to a fault. Just warm enough to avoid the frigid bitch label.

But not with Maria. Not on those morning jogs. And not later, when she'd tap on the window like a teenager late at night when Monica was in the crib and Frank was in a six pack in in the back yard.

Maria’d hang over the window sill, looking into eyes like the stars, and bask in the very special thing _she_ had with Carol.

The warm hand tugging on hers. Pulling her away. Captivating. Confusing.

Evenings at the bar singing too loud and drinking cold beer like water. Evenings with Monica too at Sonic or the one little park reserved for families on base.

And evenings in the desert, resting on the hood of a car, watching the starlight and thinking it wasn't quite as nice as the person next to her.

A look just too long one night as Carol’s throat bobbed and she talked about all the stars her brother had taught her and she was teaching Maria, and “one day I'll teach Monica too. If you'll let me.”

Lord the heat in something like so shy a look as Carol gave her that night. Shy and...solid. She didn't blink or look away or try to make the offer sound like anything but what it'd eventually be.

Look. Okay. There was a lot of truth to what her mama had said in the garden about Carol and her affect on Maria’s marriage.

But she hadn't wanted it said like that. Hadn't wanted the truth they'd been dancing around just brought right out in the open like that.

Because now Carol is sitting beside her, jaw squared. Eyes flinty. Not the woman just for her.

She takes a turn down the road Monica calls Roller Coaster Road for all the dips and rises and the way Maria races down it, faster than she should.

Carol looks startled as Maria guns it, and then she laughs as they bomb over the first hill. Monica cheers.

Maria smiles.

Carol’s joy isn't just for hers, but it will be again.

She's sure of that.

She wishes she'd been as sure that night on the hood of this very same Mustang when Carol had smiled and they'd both made a promise neither understood. Wish she'd been sure in the days, the years after.

They lost so much time—seven years! Because of aliens. Before that it had been their own stupid faults.

She won't let that happen again.

## ***

She was in love with Maria Rambeau.

Was being key. Right now she’s not sure who she is, but she knows she can’t have love on the table if she wants to find out. Romance, like jobs, and big wars waged with her former AI leader, have to be set aside so she can try and get back to her own headspace again.

But she (and she’s real reluctant to refer to herself as Vers or Carol at the moment) was in love with Maria Rambeau.

Not that she can remember. Not that she even knows what love feels like—that kind.

All she knows is that the looks Maria shoots her on the way home are loaded, and the jumbled feelings inside of her are loaded too, and that…yeah actually she’d like to be in love with Maria Rambeau. She has a nice life and a nice daughter and she’s pretty sure going to sleep next to her would be like paradise.

Being around Maria and Monica feels right in a way nothing has felt right as long as she can remember. She's got no concept of home but she's pretty sure they feel like home.

Which, wow. A lot! It was fine when that home and sense of family was ill defined, when they were just right. But now there's romance.

There's a woman she once loved and could maybe love again.

It's a lot to think on and when they get back to the house she's actually grateful Maria announces its time for chores. She sends a grumbling Monica upstairs and tells Carol she can mow the backyard.

“Now? Seriously?”

Maria heads for the little back patio with the big freezer. “I pay the boys to do the front because it needs it weekly. But that back needs cutting too.”

“The afternoon is nearly over.”

“So it’ll be cooler. I was gonna do that instead of fixing Monica’s toilet before you showed up.” There's a closet by the freezer and she pulls out a plastic bag with the part for the toilet. It looks like it's been there for ages. “Now you can mow and I can stay in the AC.”

“I mean, I could fix a toilet.”

Maria looks at her blankly. “Which one of us majored in aeronautical engineering and which one majored in driving real fast?”

Carol opens her mouth to say she doesn't thing that was a major.

“That's what I thought,” Maria says, cutting her off before she can. “Go on. The riding mower’s in the back garage.”

“What the hell’s a riding mower,” she mutters to herself as she heads outside.

Matter of fact what's a back garage?

She finds it eventually. A large shed away from the house. Old enough that it might have been one of the first garages ever built for a car...anywhere. It's roof sags and the windows are yellow with dust and the hinges for the door are rusted. There’s a trail on the grass for where a drive might have run from the house to it. There's history. Old and very Earth. She can taste it in her mouth.

And later she can taste the grass cuttings as they fly out of the mower. They taste like the color green.

The sun beats down and she finds herself covered in a very fine layer of sweat because of it. The cuttings land on her as she mows. Clinging to her sticky skin to the point that when she finishes, two long hours after she started, she's disgusting. Darker and brushed with vibrant green.

But that doesn't stop Maria from stepping out of the house and marching towards her, mindful of the rows of cut grass that mark the mower’s path. She wrinkles her nose but still comes close enough that she could grab Maria if she wanted to. Pull her towards her by the waist and kiss her—delighting in the softness of her lips and the slip of her tongue.

...

Okay that was an unexpected digression.

She realizes that why her mind has wandered Maria is telling her something. Laundry? The bathroom.

“What,” she asks, and hopes that the woman she used to be got distracted too.

“I said I know you showered once today, but you're gonna need another one before I let you on any furniture.” Apparently yes, Carol Danvers used to need things said twice too.

“At this point is probably settle for just a hose.”

Maria eyes her again. “Yeah I'm half tempted to turn one on you instead of you tracking anything in. You're all kinds of nasty.”

“I was mowing!”

“I don't know how, but you did it differently. How do you have seed pods in your hair?”

She reaches out and grabs one, her fingers brushing Carol’s ear.

She has no idea how she got seed pods in her hair. But her eyes track the mug Maria’s holding. The movements caused it to rattle, ice striking the sides of the mug. It's an ugly thing. A color brown that seems garish, with a band of yellow around the middle and a big stylized heart emblazoned on the side. In similarly styled letters the word “Love’s” is written.

She raises an eyebrow at the thing but takes it when Maria offers it. Chugs the water that seems to chill her entire core. It causes her to shiver and

It's the summer of ‘88 and so hot as they drive through the panhandle of Texas that Carol thinks she might die. The AC on these old muscle cars has always been trash and the windows are down letting in that sweet and bitter smell of sun scorched grass. Except when they pass the feed lots. The windows go up and Carol dramatically groans about the smell while Monica giggles because cow poop.

Just before east Texas, when Carol will have to drive and Maria and Monica will have to sit real low, they stop at a Love’s truck stop. Carol's not worried about east Texas. She's worried about Louisiana and the gnarled little old lady who used to give her the tightest hugs but at Christmas snarled and insulted.

So when Maria hauls Monica up and heads for the bathroom Carol goes to the fountain drinks and grabs the biggest and most expensive mug she can find. She doesn't fill it up or even open it. Just pays too much and marches out to the car and jams it in her purse.

They stop outside Shreveport that night and Monica is delighted to get an entire bed to herself. Carol keeps the curtains closed so no one can even begin to think or notice who shares the other bed.

Monica eats a whole king size Twix and passes out watching cable. Carol comes out of the shower, thin towel wrapped around her chest, and smiles at her girl.

“You gonna wake her up to brush her teeth?”

Maria glances up from the notebook she'd been sketching in. “What do you think?”

“I think it's gonna be a long drive tomorrow.” She collapses onto the bed over Maria’s feet.

Maria sighs. “Not as long as today at least.” She slips one foot out from under Carol and attempts a half hearted back massage. “Remind me to never try and do this drive in three days ever again. I'm gonna need a vacation from this vacation.”

Carol doesn't even lift her chin from the bed. “We can take the southern route back. Go through El Paso. Give Monica a glimpse of Mexico.”

“Woman do not make me even begin to think about the drive back when we're not even there yet.” She pulls her other foot out from under Carol and gets up, making a beeline for Carol’s suitcase. “Now get dressed before I get very stupid and irresponsible ideas.”

Carol rolls over and props herself up on her elbows. “Holiday Inn couture really doing it for you?”

“Exhaustion and those bare shoulders are definitely giving me some kind of feelings...”

She drifts off and Carol pulls herself out of the bed—worried by the sudden silence. “Babe?”

Maria turns around, eyebrow raised, stupid mug in her hand. “Any reason you spent ten dollars on this monstrosity?”

“I love...Love’s?”

From the look Maria gives her it's clear she thinks that’s bullshit.

“I wanted to get a present for your mom, who hates me, so she’d hate me...less.”

“And a gas station mug was the plan?”

“I come from white trash. I don’t know!”

Maria drops the mug back into Carol’s bag and walks over, looping her arms around Carol’s waist.

“You are not white trash.”

“My family—“

“You’re not. Despite the mug.”

“Maria,” she whines. Knowing her girlfriend is teasing her.

“And I think its sweet. Misguided but sweet.”

“You don’t think your mom will like it?”

“Oh no she will hate it and never let you live it down. That mug is not to leave your bag until we’re back on base.”

“I need to get her a gift.”

“Why?”

“Because she hates I gayed her daughter.”

Maria’s face softens. “She can get over it,” she says and then she kisses Carol. Sweetly and softly. With the kiss Carol feels all the anxiety ebb away. Just the cool comfort of the woman she loves

“Carol?”

It’s not 1988 any more. It’s the presence and she’s still not quite Carol or Vers but the former’s memories are becoming more common company.


End file.
